Renée Duering (who lives in Daly City) and Margot Slodzina (a longtime resident of Caracas, Venezuela) originally met one another in 1933 in Cologne, Germany, as young members of the Jewish girl scouts.

Margot finished high school at the German school in Madrid....Read more »

The memorial to the four Bristol volunteers who joined the International Brigades to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War in Castle Park is to be surrounded by a vivid mosiac border in Republican colours and will be unveiled at 12 noon on 14th...Read more »

In July 1937, John G. Hovan boarded a France-bound boat to fight the rising Fascist powers. He headed to Spain, south across the Pyrenees, where thousands of other volunteers were already fighting a civil war that proved to be a prelude to World War II. The war was...Read more »

A government-led investigation has revealed that the Valley of the Fallen--Franco's massive Civil War monument completed in 1959 after twenty years of construction by forced-labor crews consisting of Republican prisoners--doesn't merely hold Franco's own body, but the bodies of 33,832 others, making it the Spain's largest mass grave. More here.Read more »

In 1936, Norman Bethune headed to Spain to provide medical care on the battlefield and this is where he developed the world's first mobile medical unit to administer blood transfusions on the spot, which saved many lives. He's revered in China and remembered in Montreal, but more than...Read more »

Spain’s Supreme Court announced Thursday that an investigating magistrate could proceed with a case against a crusading judge known internationally for indicting Osama bin Laden and the Chilean dictator Read more »

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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The following text is based on Paul Preston’s introduction to the Spanish re-edition of Ramón Sender-Barayón’s A Death in Zamora (Postmetrópolis, 2018), in which the son of Ramón J. Sender and Amparo Barayón investigates the circumstances of his mother’s death three months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
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The distinction between “illegitimate” migrants fleeing poverty and “legitimate” refugees escaping political persecution originated during the Cold War to bolster the anti-communist aggression of U.S. and Western governments. Today, it’s used to justify some of the greatest atrocities of our times.Read more »

The British historian Paul Preston, who just turned 72, has been knighted—a good moment to look back on his career and assess the latest developments in Spain, where one of his major research subjects, Franco, continues to stir up controversy. “In Spain, there’s a kind of historic notion that the British are polite, gentlemanly,...Read more »

Like many returning U.S. veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Delmer Berg was targeted for surveillance by the FBI. His file, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, tells us less about Berg than about Hoover’s agency.
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Spain’s new Prime Minister, the Socialist Pedro Sánchez, has decided it’s time to remove Franco’s body and redefine his mausoleum, the Valley of the Fallen. Few people know more about the Valley and its possible future than the anthropologist Francisco Ferrándiz. An interview.
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Herman Schmidt of Charlotte Court House, Virginia, talks about how he learned about ALBA and how the lessons of the Lincoln Brigade have informed his politics. He is pictured here with his Triumph motorcycle. Herman rides, camps and hikes across Virginia and as far away as Utah.
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Since the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, a number of action-based movements in the United States have emerged Can these largely single-issue movements coalesce into a more unified progressive and democratic movement? There are important lessons from the past that can help progressives today build a successful movement for social change.
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After seven years of work, a new PBS documentary on the international quest to bring Francoist officials to justice is making the festival rounds. An interview with the filmmakers. When I visited Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar in their Madrid apartment last November, they seemed prey to a peculiar mix of exhaustion, expectation, and...Read more »

The Spanish Civil War, sparked the imagination and allegiance of a small group of pro-Republic American women journalists: Martha Gellhorn, Josephine Herbst, and Frances Davis. These women, displaced in war, are representative of a much larger displacement.
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic